by Deborah Haynes
BAGHDAD, July 22 (AFP) - A new hostage drama gripped Iraq on Thursday as the plight of seven kidnapped truck drivers sparked panic from Kenya to India and a body with its head severed was found in a river.
Underscoring continued instability three weeks after Iraq's interim government took over from the US-led occupation, the US military said clashes with insurgents in the rebel bastion of Ramadi on Wednesday left 25 rebels dead, while bombs in Baghdad killed three children.
The Iraqi administration has adopted a tough stance to quell a 15-month rebellion, warning countries not to bow to kidnappers' demands even as Manila secured the freedom of a Filipino hostage by withdrawing from the country.
But it looked as though others might follow suit after the latest terrified faces of men snatched by armed militants while driving trucks through Iraq were paraded on television, creating a fresh crisis for Prime Minister Iyad Allawi.
A group calling itself "Black Flags" or "The Holders of the Black Banners" said in a videotape received by AFP that it had taken three Kenyans, three Indians and an Egyptian hostage. The recording could not be authenticated.
In a video broadcast Wednesday, the same group said it would execute the captives one by one if their employer, Kuwait and Gulf Link Transport, does not pull out of Iraq.
An official at the trucking company said it would "do all it can to save the lives of these seven drivers and obtain their return", while the Kuwaiti government said it was consulting with India, Kenya and Egypt.
"We will never abandon them," said the official, who requested anonymity, without stating whether the abductors had made contact with the company.
Kenya urged all its citizens in Iraq to leave immediately as it confirmed three Kenyans had been snatched and threatened with execution, prompting tearful pleas for their release from relatives, while in India, New Delhi vowed to do "whatever possible" to secure the freeedom of the three Indian truckers.
For Cairo, the news came after another kidnapped trucker from Egypt was set free once his Saudi employer agreed to end all its activities in Iraq.
Visibly frightened, the latest hostages sent a message home to their families and vowed never to return to the country or work for the US-led forces here.
"We want to go home, please help us so that we are not cut up into pieces because then you would bear the guilt of orphaning our children," said one of the hostages, speaking in a thick Egyptian accent.
An Indian captive added: "We are being held here against our will because they feel we are supporting America. ... We are three Indians, three Kenyans and one Egyptian."
Meanwhile, Iraqi police said the decapitated body of a man believed to be a foreigner had been found in the Tigris River in northern Iraq.
The corpse, wearing a red jumpsuit, was discovered along with its head in a plastic bag in the town of Al-Zuwiya, north of Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit, said Colonel Ismail al-Jubburi.
Jubburi said police were confirming the identity of the body, but that they "presume he is not Iraqi."
Several foreigners caught up in a wave of hostage-taking in Iraq were dressed in orange outfits similar to those worn by prisoners at the US detention centre in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and then slain by their captors.
The discovery followed the retrieval from the same river on July 14 of a headless corpse wearing an orange outfit, which was handed to the US army.
Adding to the climate of fear, a previously unknown armed group threatened to assassinate Iraq's president and prime minister, Al-Jazeera television reported.
"A group calling itself the Tabuk Rockets Brigade vowed to eliminate the symbols of Iraq's interim government and to attack their offices with rockets including President Ghazi al-Yawar and Prime Minister Iyad Allawi," it said.
Amid the threats, US forces revealed a bloody scene of chaos in the restive city of Ramadi west of Baghdad, where gunfire and bombings were reported on Wednesday that left 25 insurgents killed, 17 wounded and 25 people detained, the military said. On their side, 13 Marines and one soldier were injured.
In a further effort to crush the insurgency that burgeoned during the US-led occupation, Iraqi and US forces conducted a raid on a trouble spot in Baghdad and arrested 20 Arabs, mostly from Syria, suspected of supporting terrorists, an interior ministry official said.
After just three weeks in power, Allawi is anxious to prove his unelected government has teeth, but low-level violence rumbled on despite the tough talk.
Two girls died and three people were injured, including a woman, when the minibus they were travelling in struck a roadside bomb in Baghdad.
In addition a boy street cleaner was blown to pieces when he accidentally triggered a bomb left on the road near a mosque in the city.
Five more people -- three policemen in Kut and two vendors of alcoholic beverages in Nasiriyah -- were shot dead, Iraqi officials said.
Meanwhile, oil exports from Iraq's northern fields are expected to resume soon after engineers complete repair work on the export pipeline, an industry official said.